Zegaloft12's Strategy Guides/Defending
Introduction This guide will help you achieve mastery over your base, it's strengths and weaknesses. Vital Information This section includes must know information before you move down to the next. Information is separated to make navigation easier. Rushing trophies *Because of higher trophies, you are more vulnerable to powerful players as the matching system has flaws, you can be matched up according to number of trophies and Town Hall level. (I've experienced the same problem and got a hard time keeping my resources intact so DON'T ever try to rush.) Tricking opponents *Segment defenses if you don't like being tortured by Giants, never try to fit in everything in a single Wall because even if 1 goes down, then you're as good as defeated. Use walls to separate other defenses but make them cover each other. Excessive walls can be used as outer walls to guard some collectors and mines and can discourage attackers from attacking that side and manipulate them to attack where you want. *Walls can also intimidate attackers, you know they'll go for bases with level 1 Walls rather than those with level 9. Channeling/Funneling *A stereotype for Traps is that most players doesn't make enough room inside the base to put traps. Putting it in the outermost part is a waste of money, to make it clear, you don't want to use up a Bomb or a set of Bombs on a single barbarian don't you? **May or may not apply to TH10 players as the Giant Bombs, Air Mines and the Larry Traps are the most critical traps at this level. * Funneling attacker's Troops is the best way to effectively use traps. You can funnel a cluster of giants and hit them with a spring trap, saving you the time to weaken it. One more thing is that you can funnel Barbarians/Archers/Goblins in a single place and kill them with one mortar shot. **An intentional gap inside the base can be a place to put traps(e.g. Spring Traps, Giant Bombs etc.) Using funneling for advantage A short gallery for a few examples of funneling. Zegaloft12 Defending 1.jpg|Giants coming in from the two red circles will target the teslas at the bottom of the base and trigger Giant Bombs in the process. Zegaloft12 Defending 2.jpg|Ground defense targeting units coming from their respective circles will follow the path with the same color and traps encircled are more likely to be triggered. Zegaloft12 Defending 3.jpg|After 50%, imagine a pack of Hogs go down the path towards the tesla, they'll go KABOOM in seconds! Having low or no loot at all *Loot? Everyone loves them! As others attack your base, in the Defense Log, there are raids that may contain a fair amount of resources or a high amount. If it's a low amount then they're maybe desperate to gain trophies. Having low loot makes you a less likely target for an attack. *Uncollected resources in Elixir Collectors and Gold Mines left for a good amount of time contains big amounts of resources, though not so common, a player with a Town Hall level higher than yours that go for the uncollected resources will only receive a portion of it. Making it harder to be three starred *Clan Castle troops makes a huge difference in battle. A good amount of troops can distract opponents if they don't lure out the Clan Castle troops that is. It's a good blockade against a group of Giants, P.E.K.K.As, Golems and other tanky units, as they will absorb more damage from the troops and defenses making them weak after killing the Clan Castle troops. Making it easy for defenses to finish them off. **However, high level attacks doesn't require luring of the Clan Castle troops and actually use them to their advantage to drag in units going off the sides. *Creating an open base will take individual units longer to reach each building and may run out of time before reaching total damage. This however require a certain amount of skill and experience. *Put a building or two in a corner to make it harder to be three starred. If your attacker is not a careful observer then by the time he/she discovers the corner buildings it's too late, time runs out and they leave with a two star attack. This doesn't work on a lot of attacks as they overkill your base even if it's near total destruction. Different Base Types Trophy Base The goal of these kinds of bases is to successfully defend from attacks and as the name says, get trophies and push up the ranks. There are a lot of different base designs out there but only a few really works. Common Principles Do Place your Town Hall and Clan Castle in the center in order to provide maximum protection. *Remember to always fill your Clan Castle before logging off, as stated in the Vital Information section. Defenses surrounding the Town Hall with a few layers of each. Put your storages on the first layer of walls, more preferably on the outside. Don't Do not put storages near the core as this will reduce the capability to defend the Town Hall. *However this can sometimes work on halting Troops in their tracks before they can breach the core. Do not place traps outside but have them strategically placed inside your walls. Different Designs Zegaloft12 Defending 5.jpg Zegaloft12 Defending 6.jpg Zegaloft12_Defending_13.jpg Hybrid Base Hybrid bases are basically a combined Trophy and Farming Base. These kinds of bases offer a bit of trophies and loot protection but not really guaranteed to keep your trophies/resources safe. Common Principles Do Place your Town Hall at or near the center of the base. *This will reduce the risks of losing trophies. Put the storages near the Town Hall, ensure that they're protected by every kind of Defenses. *This will reduce the risks of losing too many resources. Clan Castle preferred to be in the center but always filled with troops, preferably Archers, Wizards or Withces. Use funneling to your advantage also, good to defend against farming attacks. Don't Don't forget to reload your Traps, X-Bows and Inferno Towers, they're critical to turn the tables. *Giant Bombs, Seeking Air Mines, Air Bombs, Spring Traps and the Skeleton Traps are most likely to hinder your opponent's progress in destroying your base. Do not have 1 big compartment, this will be your downfall. *This may or may not apply to Town Hall 10 players. Different Designs File:Zegaloft12_Defending_10.jpg File:Zegaloft12_Defending_11.jpg File:Zegaloft_12_Defending_15.jpg Advanced Designs/Anti-3 star format -Will add soon Clan Castle Troops Okay, listen up, Clan Castle troops are essential in a successful defense. Some combination of troops might work and some may not. Quality Clan Castle Troops Archer - An all around troop, can shoot air and ground units, and can also slow down enemy troops a lot. Wizard - Almost the same as the Archer but has splash damage, great for taking out pesky Tier 1 Troops and packs of Balloons. Witch - A really nasty troop, they're slow and can generate a LOT of Skeletons. Hard to deal with without a Poison Spell or a Lightning Spell. Balloon - Although they cannot target air troops, they're good to clash against enemy Heroes especially the Archer Queen. Dragon - A hard troop to deal with, Clan Castles in war are now being dominated by Dragons as the Poison Spell will make quick work on low hitpoint troops. Lava Hound - Popular with high level players due to the fact that it distracts the Archer Queen for a longer period of time than other troops and will cause major difficulties later in the attack of not given attention. Valkyrie - Useful in war when putting it in a level 2 or below Clan Castle as Town Hall 5 and below players don't have to worry too much about Air attacks as Balloons are relatively weak at this Town Hall level. Can kill packs of Giants with ease if not taken care of. Walls With the introduction of the Earthquake Spell, it seems harder to protect yourself with Walls right? WRONG! You can still defend yourself quite good because Earthquake Spells are percentage based meaning that it deals damage according to the hitpoints a building/wall has left. "Linking Walls" I call them linking Walls, because they're basically Walls that separate different compartments, in other words they're joints to different areas of the base. Generally these Walls are the most common target for Wall Breakers and must be highly leveled up for loot security reasons. To show you what I mean, here are a few pictures. This picture right here shows how corner Walls are a necessity. This principle can be applied easily to open bases like what you see at Town Hall 10 but still applicable to players at Town Hall 7 and above. As seen in figure 2, the compartments with the black walls are the most important and is a key when defending, this can also hold true to Farming bases, dealing with different Attack Strategies require different base layouts and anticipating troop paths. Redirecting Walls are good for redirecting troops that has no specified target. Let's take a look back at Figure 1, you might have noticed the two level 7 Walls at the sides, that's because the Wall Breakers can do splash damage on surrounding walls as well. Meaning that when the level 8 Walls are heavily wounded by 2 level 4 Wall Breakers, the level 7 ones will be opened and make troops redirect towards the opened enclosure, this is useful against ground Defense targeting units. Dealing with different Attack Strategies Since there are a lot of Attack Strategies(click the link so you can see what I mean by a lot), I will be breaking them down into 3 different categories, namely, Trophy Pushing/Clan Wars, Farming and Hybrid/Trophy Farming. Trophy Pushing/Clan Wars These kind of armies usually go for the kill a.k.a the three star win. Defending against these kinds of attacks may seem hard but not really. All it takes is a good Defense placement(still depending on the type of attack you're going to defend from) and combination of Clan Castle troops. Clan Castle troops are required if you want to successfully defend against these attacks. If you would like to see how to do some of these attacks you can check my other guide on it as well here. I will, for the moment add only 2 of the most common used strategies. Mass Dragons Town Hall = 7-8 Required Properties Centralized Air Defenses. *Overlapping the ranges of the two/three Air Defenses available is deadly for any Dragon level. Centralized Clan Castle. *Preferred troops will be Archers and Wizards so they can stall the Dragons more time and probably kill a Dragon or so. Exploiting the Dragon AI to make them go around the base instead of heading into the center. *This connects to the 1st property because if the Dragons did go around the base shopping useless buildings, the centralized Air Defenses will keep most of the core intact without taking severe damage. A spread out type of layout. *Linked to the 3rd property, having a more spaced out layout is crucial to defending against slow units. Although the Air Defenses might not reach some buildings towards the outside of the base, it can still prevent the attacker to gain an additional star. Corner Buildings *It may sound idiotic for me to put this in but this actually turns out pretty good in preventing a potential three star especially if you're defending against all Dragons. The attacker will run out of time and end in a two star win. Common Problem/s *Usually the Clan Castle troops can serve as a magnet and draw the Dragons in. *Attackers pick off the side buildings to prevent their Dragons from going merry go round. *If the attacker brings level 6 or 7 Balloons inside their Clan Castle, then you're pretty much screwed if the Dragons are near the core as well. *In War bases, players can adjust their army composition to match the base they're going for so they might bring a few Archers to pick off corner buildings. Hog Rider Rush Town Hall 7-8 Required Properties A Duo of Giant Bombs side by side inside the base. *This will allow you to defend easily against a Hog Rider attack due to them activating both bombs at the same time, the Healing Spell won't come in time and the Giant Bombs explode killing all the Hogs. At Town Hall 8, you can use the third Giant Bomb as a decoy to make the enemy think that they eliminated the real threat. (Note: You need pretty leveled Giant Bombs to do this, depending on your Town hall level.) Exploiting the Hog Rider's AI. *Linked to first property; Since these troops target Defensive Buildings, it's easier to predict the path Hogs will take, by doing this you can set up your double Giant Bombs in a position where it would most likely be triggered by a mass of Hog Riders. Clan Castle Wizards *It's important to have Clan Castle Wizards because Hog Riders tend to group up and since Wizards do splash damage, they'll make quick work on the Hogs. Common Problems *Attacker does the "Two finger drop" which can at least salvage a pack of Hogs if the other group gets blown up sky high by the double Giant Bombs. *Sometimes, only 1 Giant Bomb will detonate from your duo and will allow the attacker to drop a Healing Spell rendering the other one useless. Farming These type of Attack Strategies are used for obtaining loot and can sometimes make you gain trophies and sometimes not. The way to combat this is to put your Town Hall outside and most likely get sniped 80% of the time, by that time, you'll have a 12-hour shield at the cost of 1,000 Gold and Elixir but that really isn't a big amount compared to what you might have lost if someone harvested your hard-earned resources. Barch Town Hall 7-8 Required Properties All building enclosed within Walls and separate into 5 main enclosures. *This will prevent the attacker to reach 50% easily because of the small amount of buildings that can be taken out without breaching a wall. Separating Storages in different sections. *If one section is breached with a storage inside, at least you have lessen the damage the attacker has done to your base. Think positive, I mean it's better to have 1 storage taken out instead of 2 or more right? Excellent Giant Bomb placement. *Linked to the 1st property, having a wide base makes it harder for the attacker to decide where to attack but still know that the troops will funnel into a Giant Bomb, most likely Barbarians, and will render the Archers defenseless against Defensive Buildings. Clan Castle Balloons *Although Balloons are slow, they do a ton of damage, very effective on Barbarians as they're slow as well. The death splash may very well take out a few troops if leveled high enough. Common Problems *A few Wall Breakers are brought with the main army. *A Clan Castle to back up the Barbarians and Archers. *When being constantly supported by Heroes, Healing Spells and Rage Spells. BAG Town Hall 6-8 Required Properties Hard to reach Storages. *This will make the attacker skip your base and can save you a ton of resources and some precious trophies as well(although the attacker may not care too much) Regularly collected resources from Gold Mines and Elixir Collectors. *It's a haven of relief when you find a collector raid and you don't want that happen to you right? The BAG strategy requires a specific base to attack. Although some people will go for it as well. Splash coverage *Goes hand in hand with the 1st property, it just wouldn't make sense if your storages are embedded deep inside the base(still separated into different enclosures) but if it's not covered with splash towers such as Mortars and Wizard Towers then those greedy green Goblins will still take your loot. Trap placement *This is a necessity, especially need to make room for those Giant Bombs since they can wipe Goblins clean. Bombs can work as well aiding the splash towers to kill majority of the troops. Common Problems *Wall Breakers tend to make a path towards the core, thus making it easier for the Goblins to rampage into your base. *Traps get triggered by a few troops only, rendering them inefficient and useless. *Enemy Clan Castle troops, yes it's definitely a problem. Although you don't have to worry that much when being attacked using BAG as the deployment of troops is at most limited compared to the Barch which is more flexible. It's still a variable to consider, worst-case scenario is if a Golem comes out and will serve as a shield for the other troops. Hybrid Hyrid attacks from my own experience can be used partly for farming and trophy pushing/War attacking. Generally these strategies involve a few low cost but efficient units such as Giants. It has a double purpose, gaining trophies and farming as I mentioned earlier. These attacks are not that powerful and the insurance of winning is not the much, this type can serve as an alternative. NOTE: This is not to be confused with combining two types of attack strategies(to name a few: GoHo, GoLaloon) GiWiPe File:Giant info.png File:Wizard info.png File:P.E.K.K.A info.png File:Zegaloft12_Defending_12.jpg|A typical redirection using Teslas would look like this. Town Hall 8(Effective when attacking a maxed Town Hall 7 as well as on a premie Town Hall 8. So upgrade your defenses away!) Required Properties Redirecting Giants *It's important to redirect the Giants because they'll serve as tanks along with the P.E.K.K.As, this can be done by using Hidden Teslas outside the walls so that Giants will re-target to the popped up teslas instead. Hidden Teslas at a minimum level of 4. *This is a fairly obvious reason mainly for easily killing P.E.K.K.As and as Healing Spells are regularly brought with this kind of army, it would be easier to pick off Giants with high level Teslas. Walls, just don't ignore them. *Sometimes, Walls can be a factor in this type of raid. Why? Because of how slow the P.E.K.K.A's hit is. At a specific level, the P.E.K.K.A can one-hit a wall and make it much easier for the attacker to steamroll your entire base. Generally what I think would be the most acceptable wall level would be 7. Pesky Clan Castle troops. *Yes, yes, yes and yes, you will need a few Tier 1 troops in your Clan Castle or some Balloons because with the addition of the Poison Spell, it's way easier to annihilate Barbarians and Archers. Although it's worth a shot since they can provide a good distraction for Wizards and P.E.K.K.AS while Defenses annihilate them. Common Problems *Attacking troops are pulled in by the defending Clan Castle troops. *"Test" troops(troops that are deployed to check for Traps) alert the Hidden Tesla/s and are destroyed with a few troops rather than sending the main army. *P.E.K.K.As are constantly supported by Rage Spells thus make them faster to hit and destroy Walls. Balloonion File:Balloon info.png File:Minion info.png File:Zegaloft_12_Defending_14.jpg|Using my base as an example, the circle represents the ring of defenses. Town Hall 7-8 Required Properties Outer Defenses forming a ring-shaped formation. *This will allow the Balloons to go around the base while easily getting picked off one by one by the Air Defenses and Archer Towers. A bunch of junk buildings for the Minions to clear. *Connected with the first property, by having the Minions occupied with other structures, this will give enough time for the Balloons to go shoppin' around the base. Thus leaving the Minions defenseless against defensive firepower. Situating at least 2 Air Bombs near a Wizard Tower. *This is a killer combo if you ask me, the 2 Air Bombs will have the Balloons' health dropped very low, then will be finished off by the Wizard Tower and other Defensive Buildings targeting the Balloons. Clan Castle Dragon *The nightmare of Balloonion is having a defensive Dragon, it will decimate the pack of Balloons pretty fast since the movement speed of the Balloon is slower than the Dragon. Common Problems *Balloons are either dropped in a line or in a surgical type of placement(i.e. a few Balloons to take out specific defenses. *The Barbarian King is used to clear junk buildings such as Gold Mines and Elixir Collectors paving the path for the Minions. *Looking back at the third property, you're unlucky if a Healing Spell is placed ahead of the path of the Balloon pack rendering the Air Bombs useless.